Ubuntu is my default OS since Windows XP/MS Explorer crashed to often around 2004, and I’m quite happy with it most of the time. Compared to Windows it is a breath to have and use just open-source software, no more installation, backup, upgrade of hardware or license problems.
You always know that if you buy another computer you can run the same software.
But it’s not only heaven, there are changes and choices made in the infrastructure and they involve wins and losses.
One of the problems I had lately on 20.04LTS is a message that I should update the snap-store app. As it seems the snap-store-app snap is Ubuntu”s new version of the old ubuntu-software package, which on it self is a fork of gnome-software.
Although in Gnome Activities the software program is advertised as Ubuntu-Software, on the command line it is called snap-store. That is confusing. And that cloaking is for a reason I suppose.
Most users aren’t charmed of snaps.
Firefox has moved to snap packaging (+21.10) and in the beginning it was really slow starting and it broke major things like native-messaging for extensions. The latter is still not fixed (both snaps and flatpaks), only in the Firefox Beta channel. (also for Flatpak versions of Firefox)
And AFAICS there is no support for Flatpaks in the snap-store.
That did it.
So I took these bold steps:
sudo snap remove snap-store
sudo apt install --install-suggests gnome-software
Now I have a software app that is call `software` in the Activities and `gnome-software` on the CLI.
It does support debs, snaps and flatpaks.
What do I want more?